


eureka (i have found it)

by bubblesodatea



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Hannah Foster, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, mentions of abusive parents, no capitalization for the aesthetic, they make it to california, wiggly never takes over the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23076508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblesodatea/pseuds/bubblesodatea
Summary: snapshots of a life in california.
Relationships: Hannah Foster & Ethan Green, Hannah Foster & Lex Foster, Lex Foster/Ethan Green
Comments: 20
Kudos: 161





	eureka (i have found it)

the last thing they do in hatchetfield is drop off the damned tickle-me-wiggly at the local quick-e-ship.

 _overnight shipping guaranteed!_ the neon side in the store window display reads. it’s old and falling apart, just like everything in this town. 

lex checks her bank account and then checks it again, because the screen shows a five digit number and _holy hell, she’s never had that much money in her life._

not that she’s ever had much of anything, but whatever.

…

for some reason, she won’t let herself be sentimental as they drive out of hatchetfield. she doesn’t even let herself know precisely when they leave the town. ethan’s driving and hannah’s asleep in the back, so lex sinks low in her seat and closes her eyes, and doesn’t open them until they’ve crossed into indiana. 

…

the first night they sleep in the car, at a rest stop forty minutes out of indianapolis. their dinner is assorted chips (ethan likes sour cream and onion chips, hannah eats ruffles) and an orange they split three ways.

the second night they find a cheap motel and the manager makes a couple of gross insinuations about lex and ethan and only backs off when he sees hannah behind them. later that night, ethan and lex make instant noodles in their room. the motel has a kettle that looks new and heats up water remarkably fast.

so they take it with them when they check out. serves that asshole right.

…

illinois, missouri, kansas, colorado, utah, nevada. 

ethan buys hannah a souvenir for every state they drive past, until by the end of the week hannah looks kind of like an american tourism map.

lex indulges her family and poses for pictures in vegas, in st louis, at the four corners.

...

ethan smells like leather and cigarettes, and lex likes the heaviness of his arm around her shoulders. hannah’s pressed at her side, her baby sister wide-eyed and warm against her torso.

 _WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA_ the sign reads, white against blue. _SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY LINE_.

…

they find an apartment at 52 theodore lane, los angeles county, california. it’s a studio with a little kitchen and a bed/bath combo, and the only real luxury is that there’s a beautiful bay window overlooking someone's vegetable garden. the architecture is severely outdated, and the neighbors are kind of sketchy. rent is $900 a month, but the aging landlord offers to lower it by a few dozen if ethan helps him rebuild the fence.

…

_i’ll be an actress._

easier said than done.

…

they’re not really sure how many beds to buy.

hannah is almost eleven, and she’s pretty tall for her age and gets claustrophobic easily, but she’s also used to sharing a bed with lex. lex’s long hours mean that she wakes hannah up more often than not. ethan is an insomniac and likes to kick in his sleep.

they decide on a queen bed (for ethan and lex) and a twin bed (for hannah), but some nights lex helps hannah push their mattresses together and they all sleep in a big, warm dogpile.

...

ethan drives hannah to and from school and stays with her at their apartment after her classes are over, sometimes going out to do odd jobs around the apartment complex. lex goes to auditions and doesn't receive any call backs, and after a month she surrenders and applies for another retail job.

her vest is blue this time, and says ‘TOY-SPOT’ instead of ‘TOY-ZONE,’ and it feels like a lateral move.

but she doesn’t have to go home to a raging alcoholic and a filthy trailer. when lex stumbles through the door at 11 pm, still smelling of public transit and kids’ sticky fingers, she falls into bed besides ethan.

…

she emails tom houston.

 _i’m in california. here’s my address,_ lex writes. _hope you get out of hatchetfield soon._

she’s not really sure what else to write, so she sends it just like that.

…

hannah still ‘acts out’ in class sometimes, and not every teacher knows how to deal with it, but it’s nice to know that the adults aren’t telling everyone in the town about it. there’s one teacher, a grey-haired woman named marjorie, who lex meets at parent-teachers night.

marjorie says, voice quiet, eyes bright, that when _she_ was hannah’s age, they called it _social aloofness_ , and that her symptoms were different, but hannah’s not the only one. in this big, big city, hannah’s not alone.

…

lex turns twenty and ethan and hannah celebrate. ethan takes them out to eat at the cheesecake factory. hannah makes lex a comic about a heroine named super-lex and her sidekick, webby the wonderful.

(lex learns that she hates the cheesecake factory, and that her sister is a really fuckin’ good artist.)

…

californian winters are warm.

lex lives through another black friday, and holy shit, it’s been a year.

at least she gets time and a half.

…

the mother foster never shows up at their doorstep. lex didn’t give her an address, and she never figured her mother had the brains or the sobriety to track them down. there’s also the notion that the mother foster didn’t care enough to look for them, but that thought hurts more than lex thought it would.

…

tom houston writes back.

_glad you kids are safe._

it’s a pretty short email, but the next day they get a huge package delivered to them. it contains a handmade wooden desk, and ethan helps hannah set it up in her corner of the room.

…

mr and mrs. green do manage to track ethan to california. ethan’s family isn’t rich, but they’re well-off and pretty damn WASP-y and they’ve never liked how ethan didn’t fit into their mold of a perfect son. they don’t like his piercing, his lack of interest in college, and how he’s _living in sin in the modern day sodom with a trailer trash slut._

the screaming match they have over the welcome mat is kind of impressive. lex is _so_ grateful that hannah’s at her afterschool art program and that she doesn’t witness her older sister almost get into a fistfight with ethan’s sixty year old dad. 

when mr. and mrs. green finally leave, it’s with a dramatic shout of _i have no son anymore!_ and ethan manages to hold in his tears just until he sees their bmw pull away from the street. 

lex sits next to him on their bed, one arm around his shoulders. they don’t talk. they’ve never had to.

for a second, she’s fifteen again, on the curb of the highschool parking lot, crying with ethan for the first time.

…

ethan’s a surprisingly good cook. 

lex and hannah give him a pretty floral apron for his birthday, and he wears it over his leather jacket when he makes them dinner.

…

lex practices monologues under her breath as she helps stock ducklord action figures (now with opposable wings!) at toy spot.

…

ethan and lex are _technically_ not teenagers anymore, but they’re only a year out, and they still fight. they try not to argue in front of hannah. ethan’s anger is cold, taught to him by his repressed, icy parents. lex explodes, a brunette whirl of pointing fingers and raspy screams.

sometimes she goes to work angry. sometimes he slams the car door a bit too hard.

but they always make up, because they have to. not because they’re legally bound to each other, not because one can’t survive without the other, but because they’re friends. they love each other, they like each other, and because they both know family is hard sometimes.

…

when hannah comes home and shows lex that she’s won an art competition at her middle school, lex is so excited that she does that hand-waving, jumping up-and-down thing she used to make fun of preppy girls for at school.

hannah and ethan both laugh at her, but lex finds she doesn’t really mind.

…

californian springs are cold. 

hannah snuggles into lex’s shoulder like she did when they were younger, and ethan hogs the covers so badly that lex banishes him to the twin bed. 

…

one of her coworkers hears lex monologuing to herself one day at work. after the initial ribbing, she tells lex that she’s really quite good and that she should keep auditioning.

as much as she loves them, it’s nice to have someone besides ethan and hannah to talk to. lex hasn’t had a new friend since...ever maybe.

…

lex sends tom houston a postcard from hollywood.

…

ethan gets his GED, hannah gets a cold, and lex gets her first-ever call back.

…

when she steps onto the stage, her hands are shaking. she’s wearing her only dress and it’s a bit too tight around her stomach (the result of a year of eating actual food and not just ingesting cigarettes and microwave burritos), but she resists the urge to curl up into herself. the lights are bright, and thankfully not blinding. she’s survived so much more than just stage fright. she won’t be scared of this.

ethan and hannah are in the car outside as moral support. hannah even drew a lucky webby on lex’s inner wrist. she takes a look at it and feels momentarily unstoppable. 

the casting agent is sitting next to the director, and they both give lex a professional, close-lipped smile. the director gestures for lex to start.

“hi, i’m lex foster,” she says, and her voice doesn’t waver. “thank you for this opportunity.”

…

say that lex got the job, and then got another, and then another, and then eventually got big enough to quit all toy-related stores forever. her face on posters across the nation, strong and determined. she uses her fame as a platform for good. when people in hatchetfield see her on the big screen, they can’t believe it. linda monroe faints. mr. and mrs. green seethe at seeing ethan on lex’s arm. tom and becky houston are invited to her movie premiere.

say that ethan makes a new home for himself, gets to live a new life, gets to live _at all_. he’s content to care for his lex and hannah, to be supporting them from the sidelines. eventually he’ll switch from ratty t-shirts to button downs, but he’ll keep the leather jacket. he doesn’t ever propose, but they get married all the same ten years down the line when ethan learns of a newly-wed discount at a barbeque restaurant he _really_ likes. he slides a ring onto her finger at the courthouse, and she takes it off ten minutes later to avoid getting smokehouse sauce on the metal band.

say that hannah gets to grow, gets to explore her identity, her personality. she gets to create and destroy, gets to meet other people like her. by coincidence she meets another hatchetfield native on a dnd chat group (entitled ‘dnd klub for autistic players/dragon slayers’), and she and paul send messages back and forth. hannah graduates, and lex cries and ethan _has been crying_ for the past week anyways, and she hugs them both before going to see the town for herself. she brings change to the town, creates a new life for people like her in little cities, gets to defy every piece of gossip ever whispered about her just by existing.

say that they become adults, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, teachers, actors, lovers, fighters, artists, humans.

say that they get to live.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in two hours instead of doing my midterms. if there are mistakes, sorry. i did my best to make this readable lol.
> 
> *clenches fist* they deserved better.


End file.
